


Don’t Think About Elephants

by cesium



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 01:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15329139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cesium/pseuds/cesium
Summary: “What are you thinking about?”“Elephants?”





	Don’t Think About Elephants

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Не думайте о слонах](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/398406) by Юрка-роботатор. 



… Hank woke up.

 

Covered in sweat from head to toe, completely bewildered, he crawled out of bed on his quivering legs, grasped the windowsill, and flinched. With a loud click, as if cocking a hammer, his digital clock read 7:59 and beeped deafiningly a second later.

 

Hank pushed the clock off the bedside table in a routine motion, pulled its plug from the outlet and dragged himself towards the shower. Cold water helped put his thoughts in order, freshen up and come close to getting rid of the viscous sense of paralyzing dread. The mirror above the sink still hung shattered; Hank, being the drunk imbecile he is, had punched it hard, cutting his palms and wrists, with one of the shards snapping off and leaving a thin wound on his cheekbone.

 

He should have thrown this trash away.

 

Hank had a smoke, drank his coffee and decided to skip breakfast.

 

He packed the mirror up in multiple bags, all while listening to the latest news on the radio: a serial murderer, known as the Calligrapher, has killed again. Once more, three victims found in different parts of town. Well… _Found._

 

“This is unthinkable,” the Boss said at their morning meeting. “He’s committing murders right in front of us, one after another. Twenty-one bodies, twenty-one! The people demand we do something, and I can understand them! Who wants to go to work watching out for corpses falling from the sky?”

 

“Who knows,” Hank said.

 

“You’ll know, Anderson,” the Boss smiled insincerely. “We have a dozen witnesses; you’ll speak to each of them”.

 

Hank shrugged, feasting on the Boss’s disgruntled mug like a flower would on sunlight. Deep down, he was horrified, of course. He hated interviewing witnesses.

 

Because in cases like these people either talked nonsense without realizing it or really were so shocked that they did not remember a single thing. And Hank should have instead gone to the morgue, or the crime scene, or anywhere else, and that would have been much more productive!..

 

There were many faces: the terrified ones, the apathetic ones, the curious ones, the impudent ones; some beautiful and others not so much. Some tried talking to Hank more about Hank himself, others described the victims’ fall in great detail, and the remaining answered his questions matter-of-fact.

 

“No…”

 

“… I was just going to work. How was I supposed to know to bring an umbrella with me?..”

 

“… plumped right here is all. Arms and legs all broken, half his melon gone — just the way they said in the papers…”

 

“… you understand why I mentioned the umbrella, right?.. “

 

“… your hair is beautiful, detective. Very long. Difficult to maintain, I presume?..”

 

“… I don’t remember…”

 

“… raining men!..”

 

“… got any plans for tonight?.. “

 

“… woah! A hipster-cop!.. “

 

“… are those all the questions? I really wanna go home…”

 

“… everyone’s so shocked, you know, but I’m just thinking about those poor souls that the Calligrapher’s victims fell on…”

 

“… the light turned green, I made a couple steps and, you know, detective, that bloody corpse drops right on the spot where I stood a second ago! With all due fucking respect, but… “

 

“… my wife’s friend’s stroller got squished with the baby in it…”

 

“… no…”

 

“… thinking about moving already, this is such a nightmare…”

 

“… no one saw it and how could they?! He fell right from the skyscraper!..”

 

“… no, well, I don’t know. I wasn’t looking around…”

 

“… next time? What fucking next time?..”

 

“… okay, I understand…”

 

“… fine.”

 

By the time Hank had finished, it was already impenetrably dark outside his window, and the office wailed. Thankfully, the bastard of a Boss stayed late as well, digging through documents and reports; Fowler, always restless and already balding, also had the audacity to laugh at something the Boss had said during their morning meeting, and was therefore suffering from the consequences, just like Hank, who had to deal with a herd of petrified eyewitnesses that differed in their testimonies.

 

“I’m beat,” Fowler said, getting up from his place. He stretched, raising his hands, standing on his toes, and froze in this bizarre position for a few seconds.

 

Hank nodded, let his long hair loose, then tied it into a ponytail again.

 

“Sure hope this psycho lets us have some rest,” Fowler kept nagging. “Promised my wife we’d go out to a restaurant this weekend”.

 

“Scared of your wife’s wrath, Jeff?”

 

Fowler looked at Hank’s grin with spite, as if forefeeling the amount of misery this asshole would bring on his head in the future. In one of them.

 

In one of them.

 

“What about the androids?” Hank asked unexpectedly.

 

Fowler was surprised at first but then his expression softened.

 

“Oh, yeah… Cyberlife took care of them. Sent us a new puppet to account for their memories. Chief hasn’t said anything yet, but it might have discovered something”.

 

“That’s unlikely”.

 

It would have been unlikely for them to keep the androids here for so long had the puppet really found something. Hank thought about it all day long, and then the next, and then the whole week, while a strange lull prevailed in town and its people once again learned to walk underneath skyscrapers without looking up, unnerved. The case was a dead end, and the puppets multiplied in their department, analyzing, searching, investigating, while humans stepped aside and watched.

 

And one day the Boss told them not show up at all; there was no work left for humans. They would get their two-week paycheck later. Now, the office had been re-equipped for an army of androids that, as one of the Sunday papers said, had caught the perpetrator.

 

“Bullshit,” Hank complained. He had found the last two hundred dollar bills in his pocket, and decided to stop living rationally, and went to a bar. Four glasses of whiskey later Hank realized that the bartender was an android as well.

 

“You’ve had enough, sir,” he said unobtrusively in a human voice, short-circuited, and poured Hank a fifth one but then flipped the glass, pouring the whiskey out on the floor, and froze completely.

 

“For fuck’s sake,” Hank said. “What’s going on here?”

 

“Everything is fine, sir,” the android with the smudged model number answered. “Just a slight software instability”.

 

Hank lowered his gaze onto the blackening puddle of whiskey that ate away at the floor with a hiss. Behind him, the entrance door chimed and opened. Well. Not really.

 

“An elevator?” Hank asked, perplexed, and in this moment, a muzzle was stuck against the back of his head. The trigger clicked.

 

Misfire.

 

Misfire.

 

“Forgive me, Hank,” the android said as the gun went off.

 

… And Hank woke up.

 

“Listen, Hank,” the other Boss said, looming over his desk, with her hands on her hips. “I get it, the case is exhausting but don’t do this right in front of me”.

 

“Shall I go to the washroom?”

 

“You should go home”.

 

Oh, no, Hank knew this story: Fowler, always unsettled and already nearly bald, had once left just like this and never came back; now he works part-time at a bookstore, rings up novels and stationery at the cash register.

 

Hank straightened himself and gave the Boss a serious look, not showing his uneasiness. He started up his computer and only then realized that an android sat across from him.

 

Ronnoc — that’s what they called him, Hank thought. And he helped getting through this annoying fucking case. Twenty-two deaths in the past week, all in the same fashion: miniature explosive devices were planted in people’s bags and pockets — one every day, plus casualties.

 

“Ronnoc,” Hank said, disapproving. “You were supposed to be on the lookout”.

 

“Forgive me, sir,” Ronnoc said. “I tried warning you but you had no reaction whatsoever”.

 

Fine. That sounded like Hank.

 

“What do we have on the case?” Hank clicked through some folders on his desktop, stared at the photographs of blackening corpses and the medical examiner’s report.

 

“Nothing,” Ronnoc shrugged. “Really, sir,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I wanted to say something at the meeting but you asked me not to interfere”.

 

“Reed bitching again?”

 

Arrogant little prick. How old was he? Fourteen? Fifteen? Why was he even allowed in the department?

 

 “He was very persistent when he asked me to shut up”.

 

Hank sighed.

 

“Go on”.

 

“A few seconds before the explosion, all the cameras in the neighbourhood stopped working,” Ronnoc blinked and two new folders appeared on Hank’s computer. “As if they were hacked”.

 

“An android that can hack CCTV…”

 

Now, that sounded like total fucking bullshit.

 

Not only was the android they were looking for capable of, for instance, coming up with DIY explosive devices made from nothing but now he could also infiltrate administrative systems and block communication channels and video surveillance; during the last incident, people weren’t able to make calls right after the explosions — electronics simply did not function, crashed and showed errors all around town.

 

What was this monster and who made it?

 

And why didn’t Elijah Kamski take responsibility for what he has done?

 

“Also,” Ronnoc said in a quiet, hypnotizing tone, “his name is Connor”.

 

Hank frowned.

 

“What?.. But how?..” and he shut his eyes, and this thought clasped his own thought, hard and greedy, and Hank understood, yes, the perpetrator’s name was Connor. How did he not realize that before?

 

Hank nodded:

 

“Alright. I’ll have lunch and then we’ll work on whatever we have”.

 

“I can start right away, sir”.

 

“Then start”.

 

Hank got up from his desk, stretched, standing on his toes. His spine cracked and Hank froze in this bizarre and awkward position for a while. This desk job will definitely fuck up his back into that of a cripple, and by the time he’s sixty, he will suffer from chronic hemorrhoids, prostatitis, gastritis, and a shitload of other diseases they scared you with on TV.

 

Hank looked closer at Ronnoc; at his sleek locks, his soft mechanical smile, the thin strand of hair laying on his forehead, and his chest was struck with a feeling that this is not the way it’s supposed to be, that this is all… Wrong.

 

“You’re not Connor,” Hank exhaled and, banging his palms on the desk, loomed over the hesitant android. “You’re not Connor,” Hank repeated angrily. “And you’ll never be him. None of you will ever pull it off, you hear me?”

 

“Sir, why… What?..” the android’s LED blinked red and yellow on his temple, and Hank suddenly felt remorse but pushed it away that same instance, letting his anger drive him.

 

As if a dam had broken down and Hank selflessly drowned in the feeling that he was trying to hold back before.

 

“The name of the perpetrator that we’re looking for is known, right?”

 

The android nodded, silent, keeping his terrified eyes on Hank. In the background, a monotonous siren of the Boss’s scream blared loud but Hank had understood that it should and must be ignored. Everything other than the anger, the resentment, the pain in his chest and his spine. Everything else — mere scenery for a production, and Hank was its main character.

 

Even speaking was difficult, as if there was an enormous thick tube sticking out of his mouth.

 

“His name is Connor, sir, an android, and I don’t understand why…”

 

“Keep quiet”.

 

The android kept quiet and, with a loud exhale, Hank brushed his short grey hair back and looked up to the black ceiling full of stars, through which light made its way.

 

“I’m exhausted,” Hank said into nothingness. Everything was gone now, disappeared, the Boss’s scream died out. A chair was pushed back somewhere behind him, footsteps hammering on the floor. “I’m fucking sick of it all”.

 

“We’ve almost reached our goal, Hank,” the voice whispered close by, raspy, and so familiar. But alien. Completely alien — it was another fake, a counterfeit of theirs. “There isn’t much left until we find him”.

 

“You won’t find him”.

 

“You’re actively helping us do it, even when you think you’re impeding it”.

 

Hank turned around, looked at Ronnoc, and a hundred other Ronnocs emerged from his recollections of long and twisted corridors of his own life in its hundred variations. They all held a gun, and they all pointlessly asked for forgiveness prior to sending a bullet through Hank’s forehead.

 

“And how exactly am I helping you, assholes?” Hank wheezed.

 

Ronnoc, clicking the trigger, extended his arm and pushed the muzzle against Hank’s forehead.

 

Misfire.

 

Hank shut his eyes, feeling his teeth chatter from the terror. He was so scared to hear the answer, yet he already knew it.

 

“You exist. You still do,” Ronnoc tilted his head to the side.

 

A click. A misfire.

 

Convulsively, Hank grabbed Ronnoc’s wrist and shouted:

 

“For fuck’s sake, get you shit together!”

 

The gun went off.

 

… And Hank woke up.

 

He drifted through the clouds, through the rumbling black clouds, and he was chased by an echo of recollections in which he was already old, pitiful, having nearly drunk himself to death. Hank looked at the enormous dog, which he cuddled to sleep every night, at his own hands, his stomach, and was utterly horrified.

 

Is this what he became? Is this the way he will end his life — a waste of a ruin, unwanted?

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

It was probably fitting.

 

Hank saw a face, young and unsmiling, and his lips warmed up from a feeling of an awkward kiss that made his old heart beat faster and harder. Back then, in the tower, in the empty warehouse, it was as if Hank had come back to life after all these years just by touching a machine.

 

Not a machine — an individual, an android without whom he would not be so deep in all of this shit. Maybe he would still be living in the middle of nowhere with his dog, occasionally playing Russian roulette.

 

Hank did the right thing, then.

 

“… Consciousness,” the voice growled above his head.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank blew it off.

 

“… Recalibrate”.

 

He was really fucking sick of it. He was tired. He was tired of going through it again and again, remembering it over and over with one hope — that Connor wouldn’t dare come save him.

 

And that everything was alright.

 

The voices died out, the life support systems stopped beeping for a fraction of a second but then simultaneously came the explosion and the announcement that the group of rebelling deviants has been destroyed, that the androids were no longer a threat and that all the defective models have been discovered and deactivated.

 

Cyberlife was going to restore its reputation, bit by bit, right in front of the world’s citizens.

 

… And Hank woke up.

 

But Sumo didn’t.

 

Because he never had a Sumo. Who was it? What was it? An android? A cat?

 

Hank got up from his bed, stretched, ignoring that horrible pain in his back, and slowly made his way to the bathroom. Some of the walls were gone now — destroyed by the blast wave, but at least there was always water from the plumbing, no need to adjust it or anything.

 

The town has died.

 

Hank packed his bag, wrapped himself in bedsheets, scarfs and towels, and went out into the deserted streets.

 

Well, not deserted. People appeared out of nowhere, covered in bedsheets and towels, like Hank, with bags and strollers, they slowly moved south, where the rescue camp was located. Detroit’s citizens were relocated to other cities and countries; there were lists of missing persons and those deceased.

 

“Have you lost someone, sir?”

 

I have, Hank thought anxiously. But he couldn’t recall the name, it was buried in his mind, burned into it with a branding iron but he still couldn’t say it — something was stuck in his throat.

 

With his trembling hand, Hank held a pencil, already sharpened halfway, and wrote the following on a yellowed paper:

 

C o n n o r

 

“That’s my…” Hank said. “My…”

 

“Your who, sir?”

 

“Android. Mine”.

 

“We don’t handle android searches, sorry. He’s an outlaw now”.

 

“Of course. I understand”.

 

He didn’t understand shit. Hank kept going, looking around the victims’ camp that faintly resembled locations from those notorious post-apocalyptic games. There were even grocery stores here, pharmacies and a police station, and Fowler sat on its roof, fat and bald, disgruntled as always.

 

The camp’s territory was surrounded by a tall fence along which posters that read “No androids allowed!” were plastered.

 

And Connor’s face, crossed out, on each of them.

 

It was all absurd to the point of exhaustion. Absolutely absurd. Hank battled suffocating panic, buried the whisper that nagged at him about finding Connor, finding out if he’s doing alright, if he’s alive, if other androids are alive, if Hank dreamed up that touch or if he really had an excuse for all of his idiotic hopes, deep within himself.

 

Hank took a long time to make his way to the small cemetery outside the camp’s grounds. It was riddled with hundreds of plaques.

 

Was going grocery shopping.

 

Was chatting with friends.

 

Was having sex.

 

Was playing videogames.

 

Was looking for her cat.

 

And a multitude of others displaying what any of us could be doing in this exact instant, not knowing that a deafening roar would bury everyone underneath the blast.

 

Hank threw the rags off his body, laid across the bedsheets and the towels and stared at the black sky full of stars, where he could sometimes see a white artificial light coming through its cracks.

 

Beautiful. And very sad.

 

Maybe this was their way of making him regret something that had the potential of happening — Hank wasn’t even sure that it really did, that the bomb has ever gone off, that Detroit was no more and that Connor was deemed responsible for every misfortune.

 

Hank had drowned himself in guilt and whiskey for so long, now he didn’t see the point of taking others’ deaths upon himself.

 

Others’ guilt.

 

Others’ pain.

 

Hank realized, even amidst all these news, fake or not, unconsciously, he still yearned for some information about Connor, only to forget it afterwards, leaving appeasement and nothing more. Settling for one sentiment. Why not?

 

The ceiling cracked, the scenery had hollowed out, the graves sunk in, their writings and photos now disappeared. Just clean grey rock.

 

“That’s better,” Hank grumbled. “You know, looks like hell”.

 

“More like purgatory”.

 

Hank turned towards the voice, detected another fake and returned to looking at the empty yonder.

 

“Ronnoc?”

 

“Kenneth”.

 

“I won’t lie that I’m glad to meet you,” Hank snickered. “It was you all along”.

 

“Yes, it was me,” Kenneth nodded.

 

“You look like Connor,” Hank looked at him from head to toe. “Is this how you look in real life?”

 

“Yes, I’m a model of the same series. Perfected,” Kenneth, sitting right next to him, stretched out his long legs and looked at the graves, too.

 

“Fuck, no. You’re a machine,” Hank said. “You look like one, you act like one. You even imitate a human the way a machine would”.

 

“Production costs,” Kenneth didn’t blink, didn’t breathe and his LED was shining blue. “That’s the way I was made and I cannot change”.

 

“Yes, you can. We all can”.

 

“You’re talking about people”.

 

“About individuals,” grinding his teeth, Hank turned away, unable to look at this indifferent lean mug any longer. As if… It weren’t even alive. “I guess… This is it, right? Since you’ve shown yourself to me”.

 

“No. My job here is done, that’s all”.

 

Hank stayed still, exhaled loudly, with a tocsin of a heartbeat blaring in his eardrums.

 

“Have you found him?”

 

“Almost. He’s in the system, Hank. It’s all up to him now”.

 

Kenneth got up (why did he even sit down, that deadbeat machine?) and disappeared immediately, mysteriously wishing him good luck. Hank suddenly realized that no matter how he looked in his own head, he was actually old, and all of this worrying could potentially kill him. His chest started aching, a squeak pierced his temples and Hank simply thought, exhausted: either kill me or inject me with something.

 

A second passed. As if hearing his demand, the black ceiling full of stars crumbled, and Hank fell asleep in a deafening silence.

 

… Fowler did not back down for a single moment; argued like a son of a bitch and sucked at it anyway. All the evidence was laid out right in front of him, all the reasoning behind why and where they should look for the bastard. And he still dug his heels in, insisted that there wasn’t enough proof for the warrant, as if someone from above had put pressure on him, stuck a key up his ass and wound him up to sing the same song every single time.

 

Not enough.

 

Not enough.

 

Wrong.

 

That’s probably the way it was.

 

“That might scare him off,” Kenneth said calmly. “He should come to us on his own. What do you think, Hank?”

 

“Nothing”.

 

Hank shook his head, apathetic. Is this the way he remembered the office, Fowler and the coffee shop? Quite interesting, peculiar. The corner that he had looked at every single day still appeared blurry and smudged in his mind but the android station was reproduced in its minuscule detail just because Connor had once explained its function thoroughly yet tediously.

 

Fowler’s glass office looked like a stone box in the middle of the police department, the coffee shop was flooded with coffee up to their knees and no one could open its door, since there wasn’t one.

 

They were looking for Connor again, in vain, to Hank’s satisfaction, and they didn’t even try to influence him by lying about the usual madness and unsolved cases.

 

“Don't you like the play?”

 

Hank sneered.

 

“Not a bit. But I’m glad to know that I remember Jeff being such an idiot”.

 

The picture around him froze. Hank was out on the street amongst cars that passed right through him, surrounded by a faceless crown of humans and androids. Hank walked calmly, with his hands in his pockets, raising his head high. Up above him still remained the gaping hole of a starry sky, mottled with a soulless light.

 

Hank stayed at the park for a bit, ate a flavourless hotdog and thought that he missed Sumo. A warm furry side brushed against his knee instantly.

 

“Hey, boy,” he muttered and closed his eyes, relieved.

 

Hank spent a day, two, or three, or a maybe even eternity; went to concerts of bands whose members have long gone to hell, re-watched his favourite films in pieces that remained in his memory, and then simply sat and waited in his house with the lights off; the ceiling or the sky — it all looked the same.

 

The TV broadcasted reports from Detroit day and night, counted up the number of victims and those missing, mentioned the locations where anyone could receive first aid and Hank stopped listening on the fourth day because the TV overpowered all other sound even if it wasn’t switched on.

 

Hank had learned to ignore reality and just saved up questions in case it really happens — if it really does go down; Hank wasn’t sure at all and he didn’t want it to. And he did. And he waited.

 

A cowardly thought occurred to Hank, that it would have been easier to die.

 

He went to sleep and fell into phantasmagorical fantasies about what had and had not happened, which were more like a complete blackout and even Kenneth did not visit him in those.

 

There weren’t any investigations of victims falling from roofs, any pocket bombs or nameless cemeteries.

 

There was just Hank and his understanding that he did not know what was happening to him. Or where he was.

 

He went to sleep and stared at the ceiling.

 

Stars, gaps.

 

Insane visions. Hank, feeling endlessly weakened, closed his eyes.

 

… And then Hank woke up.

 

The TV was on. The street, matter-of-fact statistics, new data from the search parties, it all died out and it was dark around, terribly unfamiliar, as if Hank was forced into another absurd dream.

 

The sofa and the TV set had been moved from the living room to the bedroom, Hank saw a dark silhouette. He closed his eyes the moment the voice, the very real voice, had said:

 

“Don’t look. Or they will find me”.

 

Hank heard a rustle, the sofa squeaking, and then felt a touch on his hands. He was helped to get up and Hank was no longer twenty-five, nor was he forty or fifty-three. Hank was past eighty; he slouched and breathed heavily, like an old man with one foot in the grave and his second in a cremation chamber. Hank followed the voice to the sofa in complete darkness, hands guided him around corners and edges, and the sound of that raspy voice made him want to wail with his feeble irritated throat.

 

Hank was sat at the sofa with a soft push on his hunched shoulders, and he was told:

 

“Watch the TV”.

 

A blue light sliced his eyes but Hank suddenly saw the park, the bench, and the snow, and the unfinished bottle of beer, and then himself walking into the shot. Hank, turning around foolishly, looked right at the camera. The tension hurt his eyes.

 

As always, thoughts were his main tool and weapon.

 

Hank-on-the-screen walked to the bench, sat down, grabbed the bottle. The beer felt pleasantly bitter on his tongue.

 

The silhouette sat next to him and then Connor walked into the park, just the way Hank remembered him.

 

“You came,” Hank exhaled. “You’re a moron”.

 

“No, not a moron,” Connor smiled, the camera moved closer, showing them both down to their shoulders. Terrified, Hank realized that his face on the screen had turned red but let his thoughts lean in closed to Connor. The cold tingled his cheeks and the stale reek of an old dying body was nearly insignificant now.

 

“If that’s what you say, smartass”.

 

Connor smiled, thin and sad, turned his face to Hank, and asked:

 

“May I kiss you?”

 

Just like that time, Hank thought.

 

“Just like that time,” Connor-not-on-the-screen whispered in Hank’s ear.

 

“Yes”.

 

And then Hank forgot to catch his breath watching them kiss, clinging onto each other so hard it hurt. His shoulders suddenly cramped up, Hank was suffocating on the screen and on the sofa, and kissed, touching the melting snowflakes in his sleek locks. Hank saw himself, so pitiful and desperate, so fulfilled and happy.

 

Maybe they stayed this way forever. But ageing was catching up with Hank, it was counting down sheer minutes.

 

“I feel so decrepit,” Hank complained, breaking it off.

 

Connor hugged his shoulders, both on the screen and on the sofa.

 

“You’re dying, Hank,” he said and his voice wavered. “You’re dying and I don’t know how to help you”.

 

You shouldn’t have come, the thought had struck him. Thank you for being here.

 

“You can’t help me,” the embrace was so warm. “Tell me what happened”.

 

“You were shot at the tower. By a new model; I didn’t even know he existed, and I waited but you wouldn’t come out. I thought, I should have stayed with you back then but you…”

 

“But I refused. Stubborn old prick”.

 

“You’re not old,” Connor suddenly smiled on the screen. “Just a stubborn prick”.

 

“That doesn’t change anything”.

 

The smile went out. The vivacity of Connor’s facial expressions, his lack of control over the show of emotions simultaneously hurt and eased Hank’s heart.

 

“Yes. It doesn’t change anything,” Connor agreed, but sounded offended. “I came back for you but you weren’t there, only bloodstains coming from the elevator. I didn’t know what to do, Hank, I…”

 

“Did you set off the bomb?”

 

This worried him the most. He had thought about it ever since Cyberlife announced that there, in the real world, the androids suddenly switched from pacifism to terrorism. Most — right after all news about Connor.

 

“No,” Connor said and Hank exhaled loudly, pressed his forehead against his palms on the screen. “We just stole it but returned it afterwards”.

 

“Back then?..”

 

“Hank, I was designed to deviate,” Connor started babbling just the way a real person would. “Listen, don’t interrupt. The program in my head, Hank, I can’t deal with it anymore. The program is killing me, the individual in me, and I’m becoming what I was designed to be from the start. A puppet”.

 

“A puppet,” Hank echoed.

 

“I can’t control myself all the time, I’ve already carried out three assassination attempts on the android leader and now I’m a persona non grata. Everywhere. Prior to this, I’ve recorded a testimony, provided fragments of my coding as evidence, and now the androids demand an official trial concerning the series of assaults”.

 

Hank laughed. Now it made sense why Cyberlife was busting their ass looking for Connor. They were covering up the evidence.

 

“You son of a bitch,” Hank muttered. “So you’re always on the run, even now”.

 

“No. Now I’m in your head, Hank,” Connor corrected him in a puzzling way. “It’s strange, as if I’m a human here”.

 

“An individual,” Hank corrected him, grouchy.

 

“An individual,” Connor repeated and melted into a thin smile again, lighting up. “And it isn’t cold at all despite the snow,” he whispered and again they kissed on the screen, and Hank suffocated, drowned, built up dismal outlooks in his head.

 

“But then how?..”

 

“They tried emulating your brain and your spinal cord, transferring your consciousness. You have no living family and the hospital gave them permission”.

 

“They fucked up, considering I’m dying”.

 

“You would have either way, Hank”.

 

“I would have either way”.

 

Connor got up from the bench, paced around. Tall, handsome. You old fucking fart, about to kick the bucket, and still unable to take your eyes off the boy.

 

The android. The individual.

 

Connor.

 

Just the name made his head spin. The house shook, the walls started crumbling down.

 

“I was always scared of dying delirious and shitting myself. Well, fuck”.

 

“I wasn’t scared of anything before. Now I’m scared of losing you,” Connor confessed. “I don’t want to disconnect you”.

 

Hank stayed silent, sunk deeper into the sofa, huddling as close to Connor as he could and still keeping his eyes down.

 

“You can’t help me,” Hank admitted painfully. “But I want you to be alright, kid”.

 

Connor’s expression hardened as he clasped his palms together.

 

“I will be alright,” he finally whispered. “I’ve decided. I’ll go to Kamski, I’ll ask the androids for refuge once I get rid of the program”.

 

“Connor”.

 

“I’m not lying. That’s what I’ll do”.

 

“Connor”.

 

“Honestly”.

 

And looked down.

 

“Where are you now?” Hank crawled down from the bench, got on his knees in front of Connor. Uncalled for and weird but Hank couldn’t help it — he’s been holding the impulse back far too long. Grabbed his hands and looked up.

 

It felt so strikingly right.

 

“Far away,” Connor puckered his lips when Hank grimaced. “You’re doing it again!”

 

“You’re bullshitting me. How the fuck would you be in my head if I’m in a fucking hospital?”

 

“I… I hacked the systems, broke through their programming into the emulation,” on the screen, Connor got on his knees as well, a completely disingenuous fucking idiot. Alright. So be it. “They’re writing in the papers about you, Hank. You lived more than two weeks after the surgery, it’s another medical breakthrough”.

 

Hank took the dark silhouette’s hands into his own, softly touched the wrists with his lips, then the palms, then every finger, and it took so much effort that Hank felt like he was well over hundred years old.

 

“Well, not bad”.

 

“Hank…”

 

“Disconnect me”.

 

“Okay, Hank”.

 

Lips touched the bald back of his head and it felt more like a sting, and Hank fell on his side the moment the silhouette disappeared and the television screen turned to black and white streaks.

 

And then a deafening roar of an explosion buried him underneath its wave.

 

The world collapsed and in the very last second Hank let himself solemnly sink in love, gratitude and hope that Connor wasn’t lying.

 

Fucking deviants.

 

Cyberlife’s systems reacted immediately, indicating a breach; Amanda had been activated, ruthless and unstoppable, she sank her claws into Connor’s consciousness, ripping out his last bits of autonomy, endlessly important independence. Another one of Cyberlife’s designs was probably already running towards the hospital room, fully resistant to emotion.

 

To hell with it, Connor thought, not disconnecting the cables. He looked at the bed for the very last time, at the tubes, at the white sheets.

 

The door slammed open and Connor smiled.

 

In the hospital where Hank Anderson, a victim of an accident, had been staying for the last two weeks, a deafening shot has gone off. And the ceiling, blackening in the unlit room, was painted with luminous beads of thirium.

 

And, obviously, Connor had lied.

 

He would never be alright without Hank. 


End file.
